The Hobbit: First Look At Smaug

Discussion in 'Visual Arts' started by Mr Class & Quality?, Dec 1, 2013.

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  1. Not sure why they didn't just stick with Bolg. What exactly did Azog do in film 2? (I haven't seen the extended)
     
  2. quadjoe

    quadjoe Senior Member

    Azog killed Thror, Thoren's grandfather, and in the film he's one of the bad guys (obviously), but he is also a servant of the Necromancer (who is, in reality, Sauron.) The film gives Azog more to do, than Tolkien did in his books (the story used in the film is largely from The Silmarillion, but more fleshed out, IIRC.) Bolg, by the way, is the son of Azog.
     
  3. Not to be snooty, but I am thoroughly familiar with the books. Azog wasn't given mush to do in the Hobbit by Tolkien because he was dead well before those events occurred. My point is the filmmakers left him alive for no reason. I see nothing he's done in the films that Bolg couldn't have done. In fact, it was Azog that initially lead the attack during the barrel sequence in film 2, but once they made the three film decision, he was pasted over by his son's nearly identical CG model so he could hang out at Dol Guldur doing not much of anything. I dunno. This trilogy is sour grapes for me. Orange and Teal colored CG sour grapes :shake:
     
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  4. Squealy

    Squealy Forum Hall Of Fame

    Location:
    Vancouver
    I would imagine that a) they wanted Thorin to have an antagonist/nemesis that ran through the whole story, and b) they thought there would be more at stake if it was the same Orc who killed his grandfather. And I assume they kept him in reserve through film 2 because they want the two of them to face off during the battle in the last movie.
     
  5. Erik Tracy

    Erik Tracy Meet me at the Green Dragon for an ale

    Location:
    San Diego, CA, USA
    My guess? PJ's choice was made on sound: "Azog" sounds cooler/meaner than "Bolg". So you have the movie plot as depicted which departs from the book.
     
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  6. BeatleJWOL

    BeatleJWOL Senior Member

    And the traveling party was crushed by the avalanche.

    The End.


    You must like short movies.
     
  7. quadjoe

    quadjoe Senior Member

    I didn't mean to infer that Tolkien gave Azog anything to do in The Hobbit at all. In fact he is mentioned in one sentence only as the killer of Thror (I've also read the books many, many times.) BTW, I clearly stated that the story of the War of the Dwarves and Orcs was in The Silmarillion, not The Hobbit. I was in a hurry when I made the post, so I didn't pull out the books to double check, and I should have re-read the sentence; it is vague. I agree with what Squealy posted:

    I won't pretend to second-guess Peter Jackson about his directorial choices, and I like some of the things that he did in the films, the others, not so much. But they can stand on their own as films that are loosely based on the novel, and in that regard I can enjoy them. I do agree that the orange and teal coloration of films is getting old. I imagine sometime in the future the directors who chose that tonal balance will ask themselves, "What were we thinking?" That said, the entire film isn't shot that way; the exterior shots of the Shire are nearly as saturated as 3-strip Technicolor and look very nice. I also don't think that The Hobbit trilogy is nearly as good as the LOTR was. They should have left out all of the back-story from the appendices and The Simarillion and other sources, and just made two movies just telling Tolkien's original story. Oh well, it is what it is.

    You can be as snooty as you want/like, it doesn't bother me, and I'm not at all insulted. Nowhere have I ever claimed perfection, and I readily acknowledge that I am a flawed, fallible person.
     
  8. No. but the redundancy of having every film cue a sequence of avalanches of rocks showering the party without a single scratch in any of the films lends itself to some eye rolling. What's the point of these avalanches at all? To bloat the running time? To take away from any tension? (we know no-one is getting hurt any more than Biblo would slip off the cliff in film one, since we've already seen him in, like, all the films as an old Hobbit. :rolleyes: Poor filmmaking through and through.)
     
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  9. Truer words were never spoken. Man, what a bummer. Alas...
     
  10. The fact that both Cronenberg and Jackson have gone back and manipulated the blu ray releases of some of their classic films (The Fellowship of the Ring/ Scanners) to reflect this new Orange Teal crap does not bode well for future epiphanies.
     
  11. quadjoe

    quadjoe Senior Member

    I blame the Matrix films, since that is where I first noticed it, though I found that it helped to set the tone of the film, giving it a surreal look. In that case, it worked, but I completely don't understand why it has become so popular. Could it be an attempt to make the film look like one of the early 2-color film processes? In some ways it does kinda look like that. Seems like the only place you get "natural" color is in a cartoon....
     
  12. HiredGoon

    HiredGoon Forum Resident

    Finally watched the extended edition of Smaug.

    Of the additional material, there was some more of Thrain's (Thorin's dad) story, which was interesting, but ultimately (it seems) pointless; a bit more of Beorn giving Gandalf some dire warnings, which helps justify the latter's buggering off from Mirkwood; there were more scenes in Mirkwood of the dwarves getting trippy, which didn't add much and dragged on; and some more of the political machinations in Laketown, which again didn't add much and dragged on.

    Overall, I reckon only about half of the material was worthwhile. Just like the first two movies, really.

    --Geoff
     
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